COMM 150: Illinois statehouse media go bonkers? Or just stretched too thin?

Katie Davis, a May graduate of Benedictine at Springfield who has taken a job with a state association representing Illinois police officers, sends a link to an article on Statehouse journalism by Rich Miller, who operates a newsletter called Capitol Fax for legislators, state officials and lobbyists.

Thought you might have an interest in using it in class, as the message is one we discussed time and time again in my classes with you (honest and accurate reporting rings a bell)…

It's about "overreach" by the commercial media. Rich's take on it:

It seems like everywhere you look these days, the Illinois Democrats are getting hammered.

Most of the Democratic carnage is self-inflicted, like the Scott Lee Cohen debacle, or the brutal gubernatorial primary, or the troubles at U.S. Senate candidate Alexi Giannoulias’ family bank, or the decision to run a lobbyist with close connections to House Speaker Michael Madigan for Cook County Assessor.

But some of the media coverage is going far over the top lately, and a few people in Chicago really need to take a breath already.

The media went off their collective rocker in the closing years of George Ryan’s term, and the Republican Party paid a steep price for a very long time. I wrote quite a few stories about media overreach back then, and I think it’s past time for another one. Let’s look at just a few examples, shall we?

He provides several. They're "inside baseball," i.e. more interesting to insiders than the rest of us, but there is a pattern to them. They involve essentially trivial stories that don't require the hard work of a report on, say, the state budget crisis. They're about personalities, by and large, not issues.

Some of the comments, I thought, were right on target, too. Among them:

- wordslinger63@gmail.com - Monday, Apr 12, 10 @ 10:58 am:

With smaller media staffs due to decreased readership and viewership, once you invest in your “big” story, you have to roll with it no matter how weak. If you can’t have steak, you’ll take sizzle.

Did you read front-page hyped “The Mysterious McCaskeys” in last weeks Sun-Times sports? It was basically an eight[h] grade paper on the history of the Bears. No “mysteries” at all. Just weirdness.

And this one:

- OldSmokey2 - Monday, Apr 12, 10 @ 11:41 am:

Great column… It illustrates, as much as anything, what’s happened to reporting in Chicago since accountants and investors looking no further than the next quarter’s bottom line started decimating the news staffs in Chicago. In the last few years, the Tribune in particular has forsaken being the comprehensive source for local news. Way fewer reporters means way fewer local stories and way more bluster, filler and window-dressing. It’s like an old palatial estate owned by an old-money family that’s fallen on hard times. It still looks like it used to from the outside, but when you go inside, the furniture’s been hocked, rooms are closed off and dusty, and what little staff is left just can’t do the upkeep anymore. Sad.

Then there's this. It's kind of snarky, but ...

- MrJM - Monday, Apr 12, 10 @ 3:30 pm:

I’m confused, Rich.

You say there is a newspaper called the “Chicago Tribune” that repeatedly preaches about how the state government should mind its books.

But the only “Chicago Tribune” I know of is currently in Chapter 11 Bankruptcy and feuding with a couple of dozen lenders to whom it owes more than three-and-a-half billion dollars.

Surely, those two entities can’t be one and the same… can they?

– MrJM

Readers of the Capitol Fax newsletter pay $350 a year for their subscriptions, and comments to its blog are often more knowledgeable than those you see in the metro newspapers. And its readers have a point when they say Illinois' mainstream media (and not just the Trib) have cut back on reporting to the point it hurts their news product.